Change Windows User Passwords From Command Prompt

The user password in Windows lets you protect your computer from any unauthorized access. Choosing a strong password is a good practice for the security. Henceforth you can safeguard your files and folders from any unauthorized person. But what if you forget your Windows login password? There are many processes to recover the lost password in Windows. Some of them work great and some do not. You may end up with trying a wrong recovery process. But, there is a simple trick to change the Windows password using command prompt in Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Update: If you’re a Windows 7 user you can reset Windows 7 password without any password reset disk.

The Windows user password recovery with command prompt can be helpful if you want to break into an unknown person’s system in an emergency case (of-course for honest purpose).

Apart from that, you can use this password recovery technique to make a fun with your friends by changing his system password. By this tutorial, you can reset Windows password without knowing the old password and control the access of any user.

Basically, when someone try to change or remove the password from the Windows control panel, it prompts for the old password. But here is an interesting technique to change the password of any user from the command prompt without knowing the user password. Let me describe.

How to change the password of any user from the command prompt?

Windows command prompt allows to list out the usernames of a computer. Type the following commands:

• Press Win Key+R and type ‘cmd’ in the Run command box and hit the ‘Enter’ key to open the command prompt.
• Type ‘net user’ in the command line and hit ‘Enter’ again. This will show down all the users of the computer.

Suppose, you want to change the password for the user ‘xyz’. At first, type the following command and hit the ‘Enter’ key from your keyboard.

net user <username> *

For instance, the user name is xyz. So, the command should look like this:

net user xyz *

Once you press the ‘Enter’ key, you will be asked to enter a password for the user. Note that the asterisks format is not available here. Put your password and press the ‘Enter’ key. Retype the password again for confirmation.

Voila! You have changed the password of the user without knowing the older password. It is a simple hack to change the password of any user, easily from the command prompt in Windows XP.

The only drawback of this technique is that you can’t change the password of the users if you do not have the Administrator privilege. It is quite hard to reset the password without logging into the system as an administrator.

Can you reset administrator password in any computer?

The answer is ‘Yes’ as well as ‘No’. Generally, people ignore the password setup step while installing the system. Later, they setup a password for their user account from Windows control panel. Using this loophole, you can log in as an administrator to the system and reset the administrator password. Follow the steps below:

Step 1: Restart the computer and press F8 at the time of booting.

Step 2: Select the ‘Safe mode’ by using the up and down key from your keyboard. Itstarts your computer in safe mode.

Step 3: Press ‘Alt+Ctrl+Del’ key combination when the login screen just appears.

Step 4: Type ‘Administrator’ in the user name field and hit ‘Enter’.

You will be logged into the system via Safe mode as an admin user. Henceforth, you can change the administrator password from the control panel. After changing it, just restart the computer and log into the system with your new password. You won the privilege of changing all the user password applying the command prompt trick. Keep in note that this trick is only applicable when the administrative password is left blank. That’s it.